We need to be satisfied that the support will help you pursue the goals, objectives and aspirations in your NDIS plan. This helps us determine if the support is necessary.
While we only fund supports that help you pursue your goals, objectives and aspirations, we understand that different people express themselves in different ways.
You are free to choose your own goals and express them in your own words.
Your goals can be big or small, short term or long term, simple or complex. They can be about anything you want to work towards.
You may express your goals broadly, or you may have specific goals. For example, you may express one of your goals as ‘living independently’. Someone else may express their goal as ‘to have an accessible bathroom’.
Learn more about setting your goals in Creating your plan.
Reasonable and necessary supports should help you pursue your goals, but you don’t need a specific goal for every support in your plan. When we decide if a support will help you pursue your goals, we consider your whole situation.
We look at how a support will address your disability support needs, and the disability specific barriers that prevent you from pursuing your goals.
A support that addresses your disability related support needs is most likely to help you pursue your goals, objectives and aspirations in your plan.
Setting a goal in your plan doesn’t mean we’ll provide funding to pursue it. For example:
- setting more and bigger goals doesn’t mean we have an obligation to fund more and bigger funded supports in your plan
- setting a goal doesn’t mean we have an obligation to fund supports that help you pursue that goal
- setting a goal about an explicit type or amount of support you might want doesn’t mean we’ll fund that support or in that amount.
This is because helping you pursue your goals is only one of the NDIS funding criteria. A support must meet all of the NDIS funding criteria to be funded under the NDIS. So not all supports that help you to pursue your goals will be reasonable and necessary supports.
For example, we only fund reasonable and necessary supports that are value for money, effective and beneficial and relate to disability support needs.
This means that if your goal is to ‘live independently’, we may fund home modifications that address your disability related needs. However, we won’t fund supports related to day-to day-living costs like rent or utilities. These costs aren’t incurred solely and directly as a result of your disability support needs, so they don’t meet other funding criteria.
Also, choosing a different goal ‘to have a more accessible home’ won’t change the supports we could fund in your plan.
Achieving goals usually takes many different kinds of supports. NDIS supports will most likely be just one kind of support that helps you work toward your goals.
Learn more about setting goals .
Example
Morgan is ready to look for work and she has a goal in her plan to get a job. She has built up her skills and knows what she wants to do. Disability Employment Services are helping Morgan to find work, so we can’t fund this support for Morgan.
However, because of her disability, Morgan will need personal care supports to help her get up and ready for work in the morning. We will consider:
- how Morgan’s disability support needs relate to her goals
- whether funding supports that address these disability support needs will help Morgan pursue her goals.
Morgan’s planner believes the personal care supports meet this criteria. The supports that address her personal care needs will help Morgan to pursue her employment goals.
However, Morgan’s planner then needs to look at whether the support meets the other NDIS funding criteria.
We don’t fund all the supports that relate to Morgan’s employment goals. We only fund the supports we consider are reasonable and necessary – that is, when they meet all the NDIS funding criteria.